i think your definition of mental hospital is the one used for the extremely and clinically insane. for Self Delete patients its less hospital and more enforced therapy. theres no need to actually start isolating them from society - they just had suicidal thoughts and with enough therapy usually this can be turned around.
and uh i dont think they design the hospitals to be blatantly prison-like. that helps nothing and would probably only further worsen a patient's condition. harsh treatment of patients has historically proven to be a terrible decision and has caused mental hospitals to shift tones drastically to the point that they're more like private (albeit inexpensivr) retreats with therapy rather than prison-like.
doing some research im seeing different handlings of mental hospitals in different states
this is nothing more then something i noticed but some of the worse handling of mental treatment seems to come from republican controlled states like mine
while more democratic states often handle it much better and separate insane asylums from mental hospitals.
but either way theyre sort of actually isolated from society once that happens, not for long but they are.
another thing to note is that what makes a prison so bad is the atmosphere, im more referring to how youre detained as a reference to prisons as youre actually stripped of your freedom with no actual want of that happening(most of the time)
i imagine the atmosphere is a lot more better which is how some of these stuffty mental hospitals get away with it.
also i dont mean to turn this into a political argument so pls dont derail that way.